Disappearing act

ISABEL ALLENDE, author of “The House of the Spirits,” “Daughter of Fortune” and “Zorro,” among other international bestsellers, has been called by her publisher “today’s most widely read Hispanic female writer,” but the phrase has too many qualifying adjectives. Simply and plainly said, she is a master storyteller at the peak of her powers, as she demonstrates in her latest novel, “Ines of My Soul,” a saga of love and war set in South America in the tumultuous 16th century.

Allende calls her new book “a work of intuition,” but she also reveals in an author’s note that “any similarity to events and persons relating to the conquest of Chile is not coincidental.” Among her achievements, in other words, is the rescue of the real-life Ines Suarez from the crack of history where she has been confined for the last 400 years. It is the voice of Ines, as imagined by Allende, that recalls how she followed her husband to the New World but ended up in the arms of another man, the conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, thereby writing a crucial chapter in the history of the New World.

Allende has been called a practitioner of magical realism, and readers who come to her new book in search of sorcery will not be disappointed. Ines, for example, insists that she sees Death stalking her dying husband -- and Death is “not a hooded skeleton with empty eye sockets, as the priest tells us to frighten us, but a large, roly-poly woman with an opulent bosom and welcoming arms.” But Allende’s greatest act of literary sorcery is the conjuring of Ines Suarez as a worldly woman without illusions of any kind.

“I could say that a Gypsy on the shores of the Rio Jerte divined the date of my death, but that would be one of those untruths one reads in a book and then, because it is in print, appears to be true,” she says in old age as she recounts her life story to her stepdaughter. “All the Gypsy did was predict a long life for me, which they always do in return for a coin. It is my reckless heart that tells me the end is near.”

Ines is presented not merely as a strong and courageous woman but as one with strikingly modern sensibilities. She is capable of rhapsodizing about her first lover (“He learned the map of my body by heart, and he also taught me to enjoy it alone”), but she also pauses to mention how an unmarried young woman was thought, in 16th century Spain, to avoid the scandalous consequences of a tryst: “The same Gypsy who had predicted my long life sold me the secret for not getting pregnant,” she explains, “a vinegar-soaked sponge.”

When her first husband sets out to make his fortune in the New World and does not return, Ines is daring enough to make the same journey on her own. But she is not merely seeking him: “Unlike Juan, I did not believe there was any such thing as a city of gold, or magical waters that bestowed eternal youth, or Amazons who made merry with men and then set them on their way laden with jewels, but I suspected there was something even more prized to be found there: freedom.”

Upon her arrival in the Americas sometime around 1537, Ines meets Pedro de Valdivia, the man who conquered what is now Chile, another historical figure who is recruited for service in Allende’s novel. Valdivia, we are told, is a man with an acquired taste for killing other men. “That was every soldier’s secret vice,” Ines observes, “otherwise it would be impossible to wage war.” The real Ines is described by historians as the mistress of the real Pedro, but here they are star-crossed lovers and fellow adventurers: “No one loved Pedro more than I did,” Ines says. “With Pedro de Valdivia I lived a life of legend, and with him I conquered a kingdom.” To hear Ines tell the tale, she is not overstating her role -- we will see for ourselves what she can do with a sword at a crucial (and shocking) moment in the battles to come.

Ines may be presented as a kind of proto-feminist, but she is evenhanded in describing the carnage that attended the encounter between Europeans and the native peoples of the New World. “They were as savage in their treatment of the vanquished as the Incas were, which was saying a lot because the native Peruvians were not known to be merciful,” she says. “It is enough to recall that among their habitual tortures were hanging a condemned man by his feet, with his guts wrapped around his neck, or flaying him, and then while he was still alive, using his skin to make a drum.”

Still, Ines provides black comedy in otherwise deadly scenes. When she recalls a bloody battle between the armies of two rival conquistadors, for example, she describes how the Quechua Indians of Peru watch the spectacle from the overlooking hillsides: “For hours and hours, they fought hand to hand, yelling the same words: ‘Long live the king and Spain!’ ” she explains. “In the meantime, the Indians whooped, laid bets, enjoyed their roasted corn and salted meats, chewed coca, drank chicha, got too hot, and finally rested because the battle was lasting too long.”

“Ines of My Soul” is ornamented with observed details that show us what life was like for a flesh-and-blood woman of the 16th century. Ines describes how to make empanadas on a ship at sea with whatever is at hand -- “lentils, garbanzos, fish, chicken, sausage, cheese, octopus, and shark.” She discloses that a pious young bride might go to the marriage bed in a nightgown with a cross-shaped aperture at a certain strategic location, a highly functional feature that was also designed to caution both husband and wife against sexual excess. And she points out the paradoxical effects of successful treasure-hunting in far-flung places:

“Gold was so abundant in Peru that silver was scorned, and essential items -- like shoes for horses or ink for writing -- were so scarce that the prices were absurd. I pulled a rotten tooth for one of my companions, a quick and simple procedure ... [but] he paid me with an emerald worthy of a bishop.”

The saga of Ines and Pedro ends in tragedy, both for the conquistador and for the native people he sought to conquer. “I cannot forgive them for the cruel way they killed Pedro de Valdivia,” Ines concludes, “although all they were doing was giving back what they had received, for he had committed many cruelties and abuses against them.” Along the way, however, the author allows us to glimpse the human faces -- and to peer into the hearts and minds -- of historical figures who are more often rendered as one-dimensional figures, if they are remembered at all.

“I would like to forget the death of Pedro de Valdivia, but one cannot control memory or one’s nightmares,” Ines cries. “Oh, how tenacious memory is! Mine never leaves me in peace; it fills my mind with images, words, pain, and love.” Here exactly is one of the lightning flashes that illuminate the real magic in Allende’s extraordinary book -- we must remind ourselves, over and over again, that it is Isabel Allende and not Ines Suarez who put these words to paper. *